Mobile and social games have a larger investment pool, says Jaffe

David Jaffe has told Gamasutra he decided to start developing smartphone and social games due to the pool of investors being larger and “more varied.”

“You have a lot of traditional publishers who want to be in these new spaces, as they should,” he said. “You have a number of companies that would never have thought of being video game publishers who are now trying to get into the space, whether it’s mobile or social or tablets. The landscape is definitely different than the last time I did this.”

Jaffe said the biggest difference with finding investors in mobile and social, is that developers have to seek funding more frequently than with larger development projects, as the turnaround between the creative process and release is much faster.

“At independent studios [you realize later] ‘Oh no, our game’s coming to an end, I need to find work,” Jaffe relayed. “You have that in consoles every two to three years, and now it’s like your game’s coming to an end every five months or eight months, so there’s always pressure. As with anything that you want to do well, there’s going to be pressure.

“Right now, my guns are aimed at games as services; I’d like to make that the mainstay of my company.”